The Fallacy of "Logical" Design -- or why no one changes settings on their digital cameras. The guy has a point -- some of these things are so very far away, and can't be done while you're looking through the viewfinder.

Also, if the options are hidden away in menus, you may never realize you have them. If there's a knob on the side of the camera, you at least know it must do something. Curiosity is piqued. Learning follows.

It's also makes it easier to know when you've accidently changed a setting. I used to get frustrated with my Olympus digital because the photos were often really dark. When I finally got around to investigating the menus, I discovered that on some previous foray into the menus I must have accidently changed the exposure compensation, because it was set two or three stops off normal. The knob on my Minolta SLR would've told me that at a glance.

I am looking forward to buying myself a digital SLR for Christmas/my birthday, for much of that reason. There will still be a bit of a menu hell, but being able to experiment quickly (why not take four variations on the picture quickly, especially if you can evaluate them right there?) will be great.

Is there an easy way to transfer saved e-mails from one e-mail provider to another?

I do use the options on my digital camera, but they are a pain. And Manual would be used a whole lot more if there were knobs and dials instead of menus.

There's a kind of muscle memory that happens when I use by SLR for the first time in a while. Sometimes my fingers start adjusting the dials before my brain has remembers where the dials are.

Random question -- I have a ~4 year old Dell laptop that doesn't work all that well. Would someone buy it for parts? If so, how much would they pay? It's just occurred to me that instead of having it sit in my living room, I could try to sell it on craigslist.

You might eve be able to sell it to a fellow Buffista.

What are the specs, or at least model number, if you can? That will let us know what it's worth.

I can guarantee you it's not worth shipping. It freezes up all the time.

I don't know how much you know about computers, but sometimes a freezing problem can be fixed through software, or with just one new component like a hard drive or memory or a video card. I know the first two are generally swappable on notebooks, I'm not sure about the third.

I replaced the whole thing already, anyway, but thanks.